Genre: Action
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Imagine a corporate amphitheater, one thousand years in disrepair: overgrown, windowed walls' glass long-since eradicated-- yet, some of the seat leather still there; an old wheeled chair, even an ancient photograph of a loved one on someone's desk. This second Horizon release does an even better job than the first game of delivering the player straight into its delightful blend of "cosmic horror". The jaw-dropping character models in action during cut-scenes, cleanly delineated from the backgrounds by a beautiful Bokeh depth of field, need to be seen to be believed. Texture resolution and volumetric particle effects are out of this world.

Ashly Burch returns to provide the voice of the game's protagonist. There is no doubt she is a talent, but for some reason-- director prerogative?-- too many of her lines are delivered in the kind of breathless tone that is out of place given the lack of gravitas in many of the game's situations. On the music front, it's Hollywood drivel all the way. But sometimes, just faintly deep in the background, there is an ever-so-slight hint of a melody, or an interesting motif. Maybe it will take a third game for the composer to lean full in to that approach.

Forbidden West has everything that made the first game great: the on-the-fly crafting, the grass-based stealth, and detachable enemy armaments. There are even some fun new weapon types like explosive javelins and machine guns. The only downside is that the game's world is so much larger than the first game, that the title starts to feel like a Ubisoft-esque war of attrition against an endless barrage of icons. Getting and leveling equipment frequently requires grinding, something this reviewer doesn't remember at all in the first title.

Horizon Forbidden West is a superb sequel to what was one of the best open world games of all time. It not only maintains the first game's aesthetic, but manages to one-up it in every way. The story and world building is top tier. If anything, the game is too ambitious for its own good: the only way to fill so much terrain is with filler. Although Cultural Marxism is overwhelmingly losing the culture war and will hopefully be dead and buried soon, it's still tiresome to play yet another game where immersion is destroyed by ninety percent of the soldiers being women, and nearly every white male being evil or a dundering idiot.